At the End of the Day
by StormLeviosa
Summary: In the aftermath of everything that has happened to him, Alex finally has choices he can make for himself. But amidst finally having time to do his own thing, free from the influence of the Bank, he must make steps on the road to recovery. (Set a little while after the end of 'Alethiology')


**Author's Note:**

I said I'd have something up around Christmas and I lied. Sorry. Christmas time was exceptionally busy (mainly because I came home from uni early and stayed up until 2am writing essays on the day they were due) and I just wasn't motivated to write anything after rattling out 7000 words in 3 days. So now you've got this instead. 2 months after I promised and not fluffy at all really but it's something. I tried to portray Alex's trauma as accurately as I could but given that I don't have PTSD I may have done it wrong so please tell me if I have.

This is absolutely the last installment. I've had so much fun writing for you all but I feel like this is the end of the story. If you want to chat, my inbox is always open and you can message me on my tumblr specially for fanfiction (storm-leviosa-fanfics) which is where I've started posting my Sherlock stuff as well as some other things I've been working on.

So without further ado, here's the end.

At the End of the Day

Alex didn't leave his flat often but when he did it never seemed to end well. He had a routine now, for his shopping trips: grab a handful of old Tesco bags from the bag by the door, collect his bike from the store cupboard opposite Mrs Hudson's room, cycle to the supermarket down the road, lock up his bike, get his groceries, unlock his bike, cycle back with his now full carrier bags swinging off the handlebars, put his bike bag in the the store cupboard and unpack the groceries into their proper places in his kitchen. It wasn't a hard plan to follow. He always went on Monday at lunchtime even though the discounts were much earlier in the day. The one and only time he'd seen the therapist she'd told him structure would be beneficial and perhaps this wasn't quite what she'd meant but it was helpful to have a plan after so long living on the edge. He'd decided to learn Vietnamese just to pass the time, a habit he had picked up when boredom was a deadly foe rather than a luxury, and muttered his shopping list under his breath as he scanned each item: báhn my, gà, rau, táo, khoai tây, phô mai, mì, báhn quy, khoai tây chiên. He got an odd look from the man at the self service checkout next to him and had to stop himself from flinching. It was just a grumpy old man in a bloody Tesco, he needed to get a grip. Bagging was easy, contactless cards were easy, carrying the heavy bags was manageable. Then he set off the alarm on the door. It happened sometimes. Still, he froze. Heart pounding, he turned to face the security guard. He pretended his hands weren't shaking. The guard poked the bags experimentally. Alex half expected something horrifying to jump out of them. "Go on, mate. You're all clear." He nodded and picked up the bags again. "Useless machines," he heard the man mutter under his breath and Alex could breathe again.

The summer holidays had been and gone and without Rosie Alex was alone most of the time. She was still far more knowledgeable than her classmates and Alex knew if she'd been in America she'd have been moved up at least one grade. Perks of living with a genius, he'd assume. She always made sure to visit after school to tell him about her day and Alex secretly reveled in hearing about the childhood he should have had, would have had, if not for Ian Rider. He was almost thirty, he shouldn't be pining for his lost childhood, for Maths homework and storytelling and art classes and waving maracas around in an attempt at amateur music skills. Alex hadn't been allowed to be an amateur. They spoke in French and sometimes Spanish, slipping into English only when Rosie's childlike vocabulary failed. He didn't want to admit that it was the highlight of his day but melodramatic lunchtime soaps were boring in comparison to the life of Rosie Watson: London school girl. God, he needed something to do. He considered going back to school but he hadn't been in full time education since he left the Pleasures' at eighteen and he really didn't want to deal with bratty teenagers and sweaty classrooms again. He really didn't know what to do with himself. He only had a few months left to figure out what he wanted from the rest of his life and he was no closer than he was back in February. His phone pinged and he ignored it, stubbornly daring whoever it was to interrupt his midlife crisis (was it a midlife crisis if it hit before 40? He thought so: in their line of work making it to 40 was a miracle worthy of godhood). It pinged again. Ben wanted to know if he was going out with them later. 'Why not', he thought, he'd regret it come tomorrow but it wasn't like he had anything better to do.

SAS soldiers didn't go to clubs when they wanted to drink. They were too old for that and Wolf was married anyway. They met in a quaint little pub up in Hampstead and ordered as many beers as they could carry. They talked. Or rather, the rest of them talked and Alex listened. Wolf's toddler was causing havoc again, pulling on the curtains and tearing pages out of books, and he bemoaned the loss of his thrillers that had been left within a child's easy reach. Ben was shipping out to America in a week to deal with one of several sleazy businessmen that Mycroft wanted dealt with; he was practicing his accent with laughable results. He finished his second pint as Ben asked his opinion. "You need to be nasally, wider vowels. Move your mouth more." Of course he did it in a perfect Californian accent just to annoy him. Sure enough, Ben glared at him.

"Brat," he laughed. "What've you been up to anyway?" And this was the bit Alex had been dreading. He shrugged one shoulder and took a long drink from the glass in front of him, ignoring the alarmed glance sent his way.

"Nothing much. Learning Vietnamese because why the hell not but it's not exactly useful." Ben nodded but his head flicked back to the others when Eagle howled with laughter. "You can go talk to them if you like: I'm not great company at the moment." He looked reluctant but Alex shooed him away with a careless hand. Maybe this had been a good idea. He was more relaxed than he had been in public for ages, he was socialising, he was remembering to actually drink something. The hum of voices in the background was, for once, soothing rather than a threat and whether it was because of the alcohol or the soldiers didn't matter.

He was right. The next morning he rose with a throbbing headache and a burning desire to turn the sun off. Groaning, he rolled over and went back to sleep.

It took a few more hours but he finally dragged himself out of bed and choked down some bread and water. The TV showed nothing but grim news of botched EU trade deals and more bombing in the Middle East. He turned it off. Maybe a shower would make him feel better. The minute the water hit his face he knew he'd made a mistake. A rivulet trickled into his mouth and he was back in the basement in France, or maybe the prison cell in China, the lake in Belarus, the cave in Argentina. There was water on his face. He was choking, drowning on the water in his mouth and it was in his eyes so he couldn't see and the rushing of blood in his ears was distorted and deafening. He slipped. His arm shot out to catch his fall but it crumpled. His face was pressed against cold, hard tile and there was water everywhere it shouldn't be. How could he breathe when the water would get in his lungs? How could he move when he was lying on the floor, drowning? He couldn't see anything but the black-white-red of his inner eyelids, couldn't hear beyond the frantic pounding of his heart. And still the water kept coming. He heard laughter from down the hall: Rosie was home from school. He was in the shower. At home. London. Baker Street. John and Sherlock and Rosie lived in the flat below and Rosie would be up in just a few minutes to tell him all about her day. He needed to get up, dry off, put on some clothes. "Idiot," he muttered to himself as he struggled with his jeans, "can't even take a shower without falling to pieces."

Trying to decide what to do with his life should have been easy. He'd wanted this freedom since he was 15, thought he'd had it for a while, yet here he was, listing all the things he was good at and trying to find something that linked them all together. He could fight, but he wasn't physically capable anymore. He could shoot, but wasn't allowed a gun. He could speak dozens of languages but had no qualifications in any of them. He could do a bit of coding but wasn't a computer scientist. He knew how politics worked but being around politicians made him feel sick to the stomach. He had left England before his GCSEs and left America before he could get his diploma. He could go nowhere, do nothing, and even though he had a choice for the first time in over a decade he felt trapped. He hadn't thought this far ahead. Agents usually died before they retired. John had told him they always needed help at the surgery and Sherlock hadn't offered exactly but hadn't opposed the idea of Alex coming on casework. Lestrade liked him well enough if he wanted to join the Yard but mostly he wanted to get away from all the excitement and drama of crime and murders. Mrs Jones said he always had a place at the Bank but did he really still want to be associated with them, after everything. It wouldn't do his head any good, he could tell, but what would. He could always ask her (of course asking Mrs Jones meant either going to the Bank himself or going via the unorthodox channel of playing Chinese whispers with various other MI6 workers he was acquainted with and hoping the message got through). He wasn't massively hopeful about the prospect. The Bank was not somewhere he wanted to go.

The Bank looked exactly as it had the last time he'd been in, which is to say it was bland and full of the best liars England had to offer. His designation rolled off the tongue like it had always been there and the lift took him straight up to Mrs Jones' office. He caught his breath as the sun caught the glass window. A flash of a gun pointed straight out, her face staring straight at him… he blinked and it was gone. Just a normal office, Jones' office. She was happy to see him, of course, and offered to call Smithers up for a proper reunion but he refused. She offered him a peppermint. It was just like old times. She began to ask what the problem was but he beat her to the punch. "I don't know what to do." She stared at him silently and had she always been able to see into his soul with her stare or was he projecting? "I have no transferable skills, no qualifications, no job prospects and I could do nothing but I think I'd die of boredom." He tried to ignore her chuckle at that and waited for her to finish crunching on her peppermint so she could reply.

"I'm sorry, Alex, for everything we did to you. I can get you set up at any university or college you want if that's what you want to do. Think of it as a personal apology from me." He shook his head and she looked simultaneously resigned and relieved because it only proved what they'd already known for years: that she knew him better than almost anyone alive. "In that case, we have plenty of space for you here. I know Smithers would love to have you and Mission Control could use your input. We could make a role for you if you tell me what it is you're after." He thought about it. Any job he wanted in MI6. He could make improvements. He could change things, save people from behind the scenes. He could take Jones' job and he didn't think she'd protest too much. But he didn't want that much power. He couldn't be trusted with it. He'd been lucky for too long and now it had run out who knew who he'd bring down with him.

Christmas was a weird time of year because Alex had spent last Christmas locked up by psychos and tended to forget what day it was on a regular basis. It was two days before Christmas when he realised that a) it was two days before Christmas, b) his flat had no decorations up and no one had thought to mention it, and c) he had no presents for anyone. The realisation made him decide to walk until he found presents for everyone, with a quick stop at Tesco for some tinsel. He wasn't proud of these gifts. It had been years since he'd copped out and bought chocolate for someone and Rosie was getting a book for the first time since she was an actual toddler but he didn't think anyone could blame him really. He strung the tinsel up on the curtain rail in the window and left it at that. He was mostly just looking forward to the food anyway.

Winter was nightmare season, he had discovered. This was in part because he literally got held hostage and tortured during the winter of the previous year and also because his arm played up intermittently in the cold. He couldn't say he was surprised: the arm was the reason he was forcibly retired and the doctors had said it would never quite be right even with the extensive physio that he had mostly given up on. So when he woke up sharply to a pounding heart and throbbing arm on a dull, grey day between Christmas and New Year's he wasn't shocked. He couldn't quite remember what the nightmare was about. He vaguely recalled a dark room, a disembodied voice, a gunshot, a mirror featured somewhere, heat, fear. A mismatched impressionist painting of images and emotions that held no significance in the light of day. Or maybe they did. Either way, he had to shake it off so he could go meet with Mrs Jones again, get the technicalities of his new position sorted out. There were many technicalities. He hated bureaucracy.

It was New Year's Eve and Alex was hiding. Rosie and John had gone to see the fireworks on the Thames and they had tried to drag him with them but he refused. Sherlock had hung around and Mrs Hudson was hoovering for reasons only she knew. The first few fireworks were fine. He could hear music and that was pretty cool. Then it got louder. The music was drowned out. Fireworks became one long stream of gunshot bangs, explosions that seemed closer than they were. He flinched. Hands over his ears and curled away, hoping it wouldn't come closer because he'd had enough explosions and danger for one lifetime. There were tears on his cheeks. It seemed like they went on forever though it was only twenty minutes. The last pops and whistling screams faded and he stood, washed his face, closed the curtains. There would be no point in trying to sleep. When Rosie came clattering up the stairs a little later, John hushing her needlessly, he let out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding. They were safe. It was only fireworks, not a concealed plan to blow anyone up (that had actually happened once but of course he had been there to save the day like always).

The training room below the Bank was larger than Alex had expected. There was a shooting range, closed off and soundproofed, joined to a collection of sparring mats. The normal gym equipment was stacked against the wall with the door next to it leading to showers. Rooms off the main area were for teaching other skills: computing, first aid, languages, lock picking, all the fiddly little bits that were useful but needed a smaller space and concentration. "You were the exception," Mrs Jones was saying as she led him around, "by the time you were old enough and ready to go in for training like all the other agents you had so much experience it would have been useless. Perhaps it would have been good for you." He was still in awe. All these facilities that he'd never known about right under his feet. He had already been shown his office, dull and undecorated, and Mission Control where he would undoubtedly spend a lot of his time. But here was where he should have been years ago. Why send him to the Brecon Beacons when all this was here? Then it was back to Mrs Jones' office. She showed him the files on all the new recruits. All of them young-ish men not much younger than him. They were soldiers, unwaveringly loyal and ready to sacrifice. He hated it already. In six months he would have to choose; which to fire so they could live and which to hire so that everything good in them could die. He wasn't looking forward to it. But he was in charge of the training regime and while he was he would make sure that no one was sent out on missions unprepared. He couldn't stop them but he could minimise damage. There would be no more teenage spies.

**Author's Note:**

So instead of writing my essay due tomorrow I wrote this. It's probably one of the longest one shots I've written as part of this series so I hope you like it. I would give you a translation of the Vietnamese but I was using google translate and didn't write down what it meant so imagine just a normal shopping list. I intended to have a scene with Rosie and Alex discussing what he should do and then that just...didn't happen (there were several reasons but mostly it just didn't work).

Let me know what you think by leaving a review. I'll try to reply when I have time.


End file.
